


love you 3000

by imposterhuman



Series: angsty post-endgame drabbles [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Endgame, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Hurt/Comfort, Morgan Stark Needs a Hug, Post-Endgame, Understanding, losing a parent, morgan stark - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 05:32:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imposterhuman/pseuds/imposterhuman
Summary: Morgan hated her father sometimes.





	love you 3000

**Author's Note:**

> love you 3000 is going to make me cry for the rest of my damn life

Morgan hated her father sometimes. He was a hero, he was Earth’s Best Defender, he was their savior, and he was dead. He had died for the world, saving her and her mother and her brothers. Saving everyone. 

 

But when she was four and missing her dad, she didn’t know that. All she knew was that he chose the world, not her. And she hated him for it, just a little. She hated waking up at night and sneaking to her parents’ room, only to find her mom staring at the empty bed from the armchair across the room. She hated the empty lab, the way the bots and FRIDAY were utterly silent. She hated Peter and Harley’s weak excuses when she knew they were disappearing to cry in private. She hated Uncle Rhodey’s sad smiles whenever she imitated her father, hated Mr. Clint’s inability to look her in the eyes, hated Mr. Rogers’s pitying glances.

 

She hated that the world had more time with her father than she ever would.

 

(She hated the way she was forgetting what he smelled like, what his beard felt like when he kissed her cheeks, the exact way he laughed. Everything was blurrier by the day, memories made at age four not the most reliable. All she had left were holograms and photos.)

 

She loved her father more than she hated him, of course. She loved her brown hair and brown eyes, an echo of his own. She loved soft Italian lullabies, the secret language for only the two of them. She loved everything in the lab that he taught her how to use and everything he never had a chance to but made with her in mind. She loved the suit schematic for her on one of his deep servers, released for her eighteenth birthday, his way of protecting her beyond the grave. She loved  _ him _ . 

 

Morgan grew up with a ghost on her shoulder, whispering  _ love you 3000  _ in her ear before school, reminding her of juice pops and curse words and a love so bright it burned. She lived with the unending strength of her mother, who never remarried, never even dated, but flew her suit into disaster zones to help the helpless in honor of her husband. She spent days with her brothers, not in blood but her father’s sons all the same, both heroes in their own rights.

 

She healed, memories of her dad becoming less a knife and more a balm. He wasn’t really gone, after all. He was in her mom’s look of reluctant amusement, the curve of Uncle Rhodey’s smile, Peter’s eyes and Harley’s smirk, in the lab and the kitchen and the sofas where they held movie nights, once upon a time and after. He was there, even when she raged and screamed at him for leaving her, for leaving Mom, even on days when the tears were out to drown her and she couldn’t breathe. 

 

His voice,  _ love you 3000 _ , was her lifeline. FRIDAY would play the clip on repeat, interspersed with her own panic protocols, until Morgan was calm again.

 

She had never understood  _ why  _ he picked the world over her, not until she donned the Iron Maiden suit for the first time, standing next to Spider Man and War Machine (Harley had been too lazy to come up with a new name, so she always referred to him as knock-off War Machine. Everyone knew Uncle Rhodey was the best, even if Harley was a close second), her father’s arc reactor on her chest and gleaming. Not until she saved her first civilian, stopped her first apocalypse, not until she called her mother to tell her that she might not make it home. When Morgan flew a bomb into the Pacific Ocean with her dad’s voice in her ear, and she  _ understood _ . She wasn’t picking the world over her family; she was picking her family over herself. 

 

“Love you 3000, dad,” she whispered, his technology saving her life in an impossible situation for the hundredth time. It-  _ he _ \- had never failed her, not a single time.  

 

She would’ve sworn she heard his laugh on the sea wind when she sped back to land and her family. She knew she heard his voice, though, in Harley and Peter’s scolding, and felt his strength in her mother’s embrace. 

 

Morgan missed her dad every day, but not in a way that wore her down. She missed him fondly, loved him always, hated him sometimes. 

 

She just hoped that wherever her dad was, he was as proud of her as she was of him. 

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on tumblr to cry about tony stark (https://imposter-human.tumblr.com/)
> 
> comments and kudos fuel my writing process


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